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Companies bidding on any Mexican border wall the Trump administration proposes can
probably scratch getting business in three San Francisco Bay Area cities.

Oakland
adopted March 21 a resolution banning the city from entering into contracts with contractors
that supply or support building any wall separating the U.S. and Mexico. A similar
ordinance was introduced in San Francisco the same day. San Francisco’s proposal would bar
any entities that have bid on or entered into border wall contracts.

“These companies have a choice—build a wall or work with the city and county of San
Francisco,” Supervisor Hillary Ronen said in introducing the law.

The cities join Berkeley, Calif., which March 14 approved a
resolution denouncing the plan for the wall and recommending that Berkeley extract itself from
business with companies involved in its construction.

San Francisco Outright Ban

The San Francisco proposal would mandate a ban while the Oakland and Berkeley resolutions
are less restrictive.

The Oakland City Council unanimously voted to require the city to refrain from new
or amended contracts to buy professional, technical, scientific or financial services,
goods, construction labor and materials or other services or supplies from businesses
with contracts to build the wall.

“I think we live in a very progressive city, so we know we do not want our taxpayers
dollars used for a divisive wall,” Oakland City Councilmember Abel Guillén told Bloomberg
BNA.

About nine in 10 Oakland residents polled agree with the resolution, Guillén said
March 21. “I’m hoping that the more cities join in, the more powerful our voices will
be in this movement to stop the wall.”

Long Beach, San Diego, Larkspur and Watsonville are among the California cities that
have expressed interest in Oakland’s legislation, Guillén said.

A day before the Oakland and San Francisco actions, state lawmakers announced similar
moves on the issue. They said state legislation (
A.B. 946) would be amended to require the $514 billion California Public Employees’ Retirement
System and California State Teachers’
Retirement System to divest pension fund holdings in companies winning contracts with
U.S. Customs and Border Protection involving the wall.

Big Names, Big Bans

San Francisco’s proposal would prohibit the city from contracting with companies that
bid or win contracts to supply or work on any proposed border wall. The list of interested
vendors on FedBizOpps.gov for the Department of Homeland Security’s bidding includes
Hansel Phelps Construction Co., which San Francisco paid $1.5 billion over five years
for work on several projects at San Francisco International Airport.

Another interested vendor is Tutor Perini Corp., which won an $860 million San Francisco
Municipal Transportation Agency contract to build the city’s central subway, Supervisor
Ronen said.

A representative for T.Y. Lin International Inc., a San Francisco-based infrastructure
consulting firm also listed on the federal government website as interested in the
wall bidding, also couldn’t be reached for comment. The company’s projects include
the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge eastern span and the California high-speed rail
project.

The deadline for contractors to submit bids for the wall’s first phase is March 29.

Home of Immigrants

One-third of San Francisco residents are immigrants, the city’s proposed law says.
Roughly one in four Oakland residents are foreign-born and 31 percent of those are
from Mexico, the Oakland resolution says.

President Donald Trump’s
Executive Order 13,767 directed the DHS to develop plans for building a wall along the southern U.S. border
to stem the flow of illegal immigrants.

The San Francisco proposal says such a wall “stands as a symbol of prejudice, discrimination,
and the denial of human dignity.”

San Francisco is a “major player in the marketplace,” Ronen said. “By introducing
this legislation, we are moving beyond symbolic protest and making it clear to companies
interested in doing business with San Francisco that we expect those companies to
uphold basic principles of compassion and dedication to human rights.”

There appears to be a strong likelihood that the San Francisco ordinance will be enacted.
The city has already said it would refuse to join any national registry of individuals
based on religion, race, ethnicity or national origin and is committed to funding
immigration-related causes including defending individuals fighting deportation.

To contact the reporter on this story: Joyce E. Cutler in San Francisco at
JCutler@bna.com

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jo-el J. Meyer at
jmeyer@bna.com

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